Chengdu People II

May 03, 2010

More from Chengdu. 20 large images.

This was my first day in Chengdu, near the People’s Park. The little girl is digging live scorpions out of the bowl with chopsticks.

The Prince of WuHou.

This couple runs the shao kao stand that was next to the hotel I stayed in when I arrived. One night I tried to ask the woman if the man was her husband but instead of “fu” I wrote “tian,” which though the characters are similar means “heaven.”

Wet market near YongLing Garden in JinNiu district.

There are more children than you’d expect with eyepatches.

This was a big fight on the sidewalk. The guy in the green parka actually punched the guy turning away in the black parka. A lot of yelling.

Uyghur guys selling the nut-slab candy. Inexplicable gang signs. I felt terrible because the guy in blue asked me (entirely by gesture) to send the photo to him on his phone and I showed him my cheapo cellphone that does not take pictures. He wrote his info in my notebook in Arabic. I wrote my email address, but he didn’t have email. Some very modern and foreign kind of culture clash of technology.

One of the many examples, along with trash pickers and children selling things to tourists, of why the phrase “China is developing” is so complex.